


These Are the Towns Our Lives Abandoned

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drabble, During Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-12
Updated: 2007-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:52:51
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: Some things can't change.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

Title: These Are the Towns Our Lives Abandoned  
Author: Impertinence  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: Sam/Dean  
Summary: Some things can't change.  
Notes: This started as a drabble, but I had a bigger story to tell, so now it's ten drabbles. Title from [this](http://community.livejournal.com/breathe_poetry/196312.html) poem.  
  
  
  
||  
  
It's Dean's tenth birthday and Dad's gone. Dean makes Sam a slingshot and shows him how to kill birds with the stones by the creek.  
  
The sun's going down, reddish and orange streaks that look to Dean like the Demon's finally ending the world, when Sam climbs up next to him on the stoop.  
  
“Happy Birfday,” Sam says solemnly.  
  
He blinks, because Sam's hands are empty—but then Sam tackle-hugs him, knocking them both off the steps.   
  
Dean's knee gets skinned, but he's got a squirmy armful of little brother, and that kind of makes today okay, a little.  
  
||  
  
After Dean's nose gets glued to a condom and Sam's hair all falls out, Sam sticks a rat in Dean's bed.  
  
Dean shrieks, falling out of his bed in a tangle of sheets, while Sam cackles on the bunk above him.  
  
“I am going to _kill you!_ ” He swings up on the bed and pins his eight-year-old brother to the bed. Sam's eyes widen a second before Dean's fingers dig into Sam's ribs, tickling mercilessly.  
  
“Aaaah! I give, I give!” Sam yells.  
  
Dean turns the tickle into a hug; they fall asleep clinging to each other.  
  
||  
  
“He called—he—“  
  
“Breathe.” Dean claps Sam on the back.  
  
Sam scowls. His hair, wet with toilet water, flutters when he huffs a breath. “He called me _gay._ Because you hug me and, and fifth graders don't hug. We're not gay, are we?”  
  
“'Course not,” Dean says. “Hey, what's that guy's name again?”  
  
“Don Girard.”  
  
Two days later Don wakes up tied to the tree outside his house with _FAGGOT_ painted in bright pink on his naked ass. Dean walks Sam to school, picking him up and swinging him around when it's time to say goodbye.  
  
||  
  
“Don't _ever_ do that again.”  
  
Dean wants to retort that he's sixteen and he'll jump in front of Sam if he fucking well feels like it, but Sam's expression is ferocious and Dean's blood is pouring out of his body, so he grits his teeth and nods. “Won't.”  
  
“Better not,” Sam says. A needle glints in the moonlight—a few blinding seconds of pain later Sam's pressing his hands to Dean's skin, touching indiscriminately, his own palms covered in blood.  
  
“Don't _do_ that,” Sam says desperately, like he knows Dean'll never stop trying to save him.  
  
||  
  
“I'm not sick.”  
  
“You were cursed by a witch and it's flu season.” Sam plops the mug of tea down in front of Dean and glares at him. “Drink it, and then you're having some soup.”  
  
Sam's a freshman and ought to be doing his homework or making time with some girl. He might be, too, if Dean wasn't coughing up blood.  
  
“Fucker,” Dean says, draining the tea.  
  
“You're just lucky I was here.” The soup's starting to boil; Sam turns the flames down.  
  
“Like you ever won't be,” Dean grumbles, tugging the blanket tighter around himself.  
  
Sam doesn't answer.  
  
||  
  
Sam's sixteen when they go skinny dipping in the Grand Canyon. They're lying on a ledge of orange rock, watching the sun come up, when Dean glances over and _sees._  
  
Lean, tan muscle, marred by lumpy scars. Long limbs, no longer awkward and coltish. Dark, wet hair, curling at the ends. Girls' eyelashes, soft and pronounced against high cheekbones. Clever, strong fingers with rough nails. Lips curved in a soft, happy smile.  
  
Dean watches as the sun bathes them in dusky golden light. The thought darts through his mind like a moth, plain and miraculous.  
  
_Maybe._  
  
||  
  
They never talk about it.  
  
A poltergeist is found and banished, a ghost's bones burned, a siren killed, and not a word passes between them.  
  
Sam loads his gun and shoots: _I have to. You know I do._  
  
Dean bashes a zombie's skull in. _You're leaving. You don't._  
  
Their lips meet, quiet and desperate, hand twining together as their tongues touch. _I'm proud of you. I love you._  
  
Sam brushes a kiss against Dean's temple, slips out with his backpack before dawn. _I know._  
  
||  
  
Phone calls aren't returned and memories fade. It's two years before Sam bothers to get an answering machine.  
  
Dean's stopped calling, and Sam tells himself he doesn't care, lets the anger of eighteen years overshadow everything else.  
  
Then it's his birthday, and after the beep:  
  
“It's Dean. I. Man, I've got no excuse for not calling, I just...fuck. You're twenty. One more year and you'll be able to get drunk legally. Uh. Don't get drunk too much, okay? I'm—I'm proud of you, man, and if you lose that scholarship I'm not gonna help you pay for that rich-kid school of yours.  
  
“Um. Happy birthday, Sam.”  
  
||  
  
It takes ten shots of tequila and two beers before Sam turns to Dean.  
  
“I'm not okay,” he says slowly.  
  
Dean does the only thing he knows how: he punches Sam square in the face.  
  
Sam jumps on him, fists flying and tears falling, until their legs tangle and suddenly they're hard and thrusting, fighting for things Dean doesn't have a name for.  
  
“Dean, God, _Dean,_ ” Sam says, little and lost, and comes.  
  
They sleep on the floor together, Dean cradling Sam like he did when they were both still small enough to be afraid of the dark.  
  
||  
  
The sky is streaked with red and gold. Dean thinks of the Demon, of birthdays and the Martian Death Flu and how crying is never enough but everyone does it anyway.  
  
He's thirty years and five days old, and something's finally decided to tear the universe apart.  
  
“Hey, Sam?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
He considers it for a second, fingers tapping out Metallica on the dashboard. “Never mind.”  
  
“I love you too, Dean,” Sam says with a tiny ironic smile, and they get out of the Impala and start hiking up the mountain, pulling each other up over sharp rocks and springy turf.  
  
||  
  
end.  
  
||


End file.
